Asus: We are NOT killing off Transformer Prime

It's just that availability has been pants

Asus has not placed the Eee Pad Transformer Prime on the scrap-heap just yet, but availability has been so poor that channel folk can be forgiven for thinking it had been killed off, the vendor has admitted.

Typically, non-iPad vendors have struggled to create the same level of hype around their tablets that Apple has mastered in recent years, and if anything have only managed to push massive volumes out of the door by hacking prices.

"We have no plans to kill it," said a PR exec at Asus, "but due to fact that it is selling out so quickly, it looks as though we are stopping [manufacturing] it."

He said the vendor was taking delivery of stocks on a weekly basis and confirmed that major resellers were hogging the stock, claiming the amount of kit Asus could provide was "nothing close to actual demand".

"We can't produce them quickly enough. Once again we've underestimated demand ... and had to bring Q1 shipments forward into Q4," said the Asus spokesman.

The Android-based tablet has come in for its fair share of criticism – and some praise – with UK mobile retailer Clove withdrawing the product from its shelves due to customer complaints.

According to Q4 sales-in figures for the UK, Asus shipped just 9,000 fondleslabs into channel but it did not breakdown the numbers into the specific models on the market – namely the Eee Pad Transformer TF 101 and Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201.

The Transformer 300 and 7000 have not yet been released to UK consumers. ®